Monday, January 09, 2006

New formats

I have a sneaking suspicion I have mentioned this before, but what is all this furore about the next generation of DVDS- blue ray or HD?

I mean, yes, obviously for gaming it is useful, and I suppose for series too, because storage is better, but a lot of the conversation being made is about films. Sorry, but surely films will run out of special features to put on the disk? Theres only so many "making of" features one can watch. Also, there are talks about improved picture quality. Huh? Surely theres a limit to this too? I mean, the difference between video and DVD is just about noticable, and it's nice to be able to pause at any point, but is there really going to be much room for improvement? Those crazy guys at Sony!

What frustrates me about the march of progress, however, is the way people do not utilise it properly. The X-box 360 is out now, and I bet about 9/10 of the games on it could have been created on the X-box with worse graphics. These things have huge processors, and we have EA games making yet another sports game, where the difference between one game and the other is that you can design your own kit. I want a game world in which things react like I would expect! I want to kick a can and see it roll away. I want to push against someone and see them fall back. I want to be able to shoot my rocket launcher into a wall and have it do some bloody damage! It is rare that a game is not guilty of this- I know it's a lot of effort, but come on! It is worth it! It is what makes games like Half life 2 transcend, above games like Fear. Yes, Fear has enemies with amazing AI, but if I can't get past a puny barrier because apparently it is immune to all damage, then I will be annoyed.